A painting of any quality is always going to have nerdy energy, an affirmation behind it. It's gonna be like a kid playing a video game.

When I went to college, and I went to art school, I started to realize that Warhol was cool and that pop art was fun.

It wasn't really until after I got out of art school that I realized that I'd been doing that sort of for the audience, for that context. Somehow, being alone in the room, it made no sense at all to make those kinds of paintings.

There is, literally and figuratively, not a gold standard. That's almost as big a problem in art as in the financial world. How do you affix a value to something that only has value because a certain number of people agree to believe in that value?

A lot of times maturing as an artist is just starting to do the things you like to do.

I think a lot of people take a scholarly approach where they feel like you're supposed to study things that depress you.

Painting is like being a lawyer and attacking a corporation.